Conventional video compression methods include motion-compensated prediction for reducing amounts of video data to encode by exploiting temporal correlations between successive frames in a video stream. Motion-compensated prediction includes determining, for each portion of pixels (e.g., block of pixels) of a current video frame being encoded, a similar block in a reference frame (e.g., a previously encoded frame, group of frames, or portion of a frame) to be used as a predictor to encode the portion of the current video frame being encoded. For each block of a current frame to be encoded, a search of a previously encoded portion of data is performed within a reference area (i.e., search window) around a co-located block in the reference frame.
Panoramic video includes the display of images representing views in multiple directions, such as for example, a full panoramic view of the sphere surrounding a point in three dimensional (3D) space (e.g., 360 degrees along the horizon and 180 degrees up and down) and a partial panoramic view (i.e., view of less than the full sphere in one or more directions). Video compression of panoramic video includes warping and storing the panoramic images using a panoramic format, such as a full spherical format (e.g., equirectangular format, cylindrical format and cube maps) in the case of full panoramic views or using a partial format (e.g., cylindrical format, arc format, rectilinear format and partial spherical format) in the case of partial panoramic views.